


Follow the Shine

by wirewrappedlily



Series: Satellite [3]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Poisoning, don't ask: just read it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 08:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17179739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wirewrappedlily/pseuds/wirewrappedlily
Summary: He'd been ordered out of Medical...which was new, he had to admit.





	Follow the Shine

The lingering sweetness of vanilla and caramel was something the Quartermaster of MI6 could desperately cling to as he stood in the midst of a catastrophe. It was really too bad that the sweetness had faded from his tongue hours before. 

At home, James Bond would be waiting for him with dinner waiting to be cooked; reading or playing the adventure game Q had convinced him to try as he'd convalesced. At home, James wouldn't yet have started to wonder why Q was running so late. James only worried when Q hadn't called him for a few hours, because James knew the work and all that it demanded of Q. 

Q didn't bother to wonder when his apartment had become "home" instead of a place where he slept sometimes. When he'd started thinking of it with a longing. He didn't want to, because it was depressingly coincidental to the time James had moved in with him, and Q didn't need to dwell any further on just how badly he'd mucked up in falling in the orbit of James goddamned Bond. It was time, after all, to dwell on how he'd mucked up his work, the love of his life, in letting himself get distracted by Bond. 

The lingering sweetness of vanilla and caramel, Q knew now, had been his undoing. 

As he crumpled to the floor, with Veronica and Helena jumping into panicked action over him, Q wondered who would call James to let him know that the Quartermaster had been poisoned. 

 

~

 

He'd been ordered out of Medical...which was new, he had to admit. 

James Bond wasn't cleared for active duty; he was grounded indefinitely due to his injuries, and for as much as he knew that going back to work would infuriate Q, he was tempted to do it if only to entice the man into waking and yelling at him. 

His clearance for Six had been limited during his recuperation from the injuries done in South America. He hadn't minded being barred from most of the building--but he'd been barred from Q Branch, and that had annoyed at first, only to rancour now. He couldn't go to the boffins; couldn't find out from them what had Q laid so low when James had only seen him a few hours before for a lunchtime stolen away from Six. Medical would not tell him--would not even let Bond see Q, because Bond was not family and did not warrant special treatment. 

Hell, Bond had only found out that Q had been laid low when he'd called, and Helena had been the one to answer Q's personal line. 

Helena had told him about the collapse, about calling for Medical, about Q's groggy insistence that it had been poison. 

James would have stormed the streets to the food truck where they'd ordered lunch, and the bakery they'd picked up dessert and tea from, if Veronica had not intercepted him, sliding tightly into a hug as he'd gotten ready to storm through London. 

Veronica, Q's favourite boffin, who'd been there when he'd fallen along with Helena. 

It'd given Moneypenny enough time to catch up with him, that hug with Veronica, and it was made clear in no uncertain terms that James was to leave Medical and Six and let the investigation progress as it would, and damn the apparent fondness that Q and James seemed to share for each other, because James didn't have the clearance to be allowed to care. 

James couldn't go to Mallory and demand his clearance reinstated; he doubted his clearance would even come close to allowing him to see Q. 

James couldn't go to Mallory and demand his clearance reinstated; as much as he _ached_ to put a bullet between the eyes of anyone who'd been responsible for Q, he knew that Q would be irate and appalled, and James wasn't sure which of those would be worse. 

 

~

 

Veronica Steeler kept a weather eye on the location of James Bond, only slightly guilty for having orchestrated a hug with the poor man in order to slip him the beacon. 

Eve had been insistent that letting Bond off the reservation now, though, would break the Boss's heart, and with that much poison in his system, Q needed all the heart-health he could get. 

In Veronica's ear, Helena trekked through the London Underground on the trail of their poisoner, but Veronica could barely focus on that while her heart hurt so badly for Bond. "What if I hacked Q's files and made Bond his next-of-kin?" Veronica asked, knowing that had to be rhetorical as Helena crept through the dark. "I mean...You should have seen him, H. He was hurting to the max, and I don't like leaving the Boss alone like this." 

There was a soft ring of a garrotte being unsheathed, and then a gurgle of intense pain as Helena used it. Huffing slightly, more in exasperation than in exertion, Helena replied, _"Flower, if you can hack into Q's files, by all means do so. I will back you. But don't discount Bond's sheer bloody-mindedness, my love. He'll find a way, or he'll make one."_ Grunting as she searched through pockets, Helena made a few noises of disgust before she heaved a victorious sigh. _"Burner cell and a set of keys--"_

"Bring them home for me, babe." Veronica smiled slightly so that Helena could hear it over their comm, and 003 hummed appreciatively. "And I'll ignore the fact that you called into question my hacking capabilities only because it's against hacking the Boss." 

Giving an audible wince, Helena turned to make her way out of the Underground, hoping above all hope that whatever Bond was brewing to do, it wouldn't result in Veronica getting reprimanded or her having to shoot him. 

 

~

 

Q knew that he'd woken before, but his brain couldn't handle telling him what was dream and what was real--and he couldn't blame it. 

This time, though, there was a strong hand wrapped around one of his, and the familiar, faint sound of Bond's purring snore. Q immediately liked this dream, if it was a dream. 

Licking his lips, Q looked around the room blearily, and knew something was quite wrong if he couldn't even summon up the curiosity within himself to wonder what had happened to him, exactly, to land him in Medical with James Bond at his bedside. 

The dream of being poisoned surfaced, and Q half-shied from that; he'd been with Bond for lunch. Bond would have protected him from that, surely. 

Bond protected him from everything...


End file.
